People are increasingly utilizing computing devices, including portable and mobile devices, to perform various types of tasks. Accordingly, there is a desire to increase the ways in which users interact with the devices to perform these tasks. One interaction approach that is gaining in popularity involves gesture input. To provide gesture input, a user positions himself or herself in front of a camera or sensor bar and makes a motion with a feature such as the user's hand or arm. A computing device can capture images or sensor data to attempt to recognize the motion. Cameras or sensors used with such devices do not have full hemispheric fields of view, however, such that there is a zone near the device where a feature of the user is unable to be captured by the device. Thus, a user can provide input by touching the device or making gestures at least a minimum distance from the device, but is limited in providing input by the dead zone between those regions. While capacitive approaches can allow for some input in the dead zone, the range of these approaches is limited and they require a significant amount of power, which can be particularly undesirable for portable and mobile devices that have limited battery life.